


Tontine

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:14:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27604736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Follows the episode "Old Soldiers" and shows Klinger's struggle to cope with the cold comments that so often get directed at him.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

It felt good to be invited to take part in the Colonel’s ceremony (Klinger couldn’t think of what else to call it), to feel he was part of a family. But now that it was done, he felt all Cinderella at 12:06: dress in tatters, slipper lost, coach smashed into pumpkin seed and bright orange smears. 

Curling up in his cot, he tugged a blanket down and tucked it under his chin, making himself small. The Colonel had said “To love and friendship,” and then he’d gone and looked Klinger in the eye… and the pain there  _ hadn’t _ been for his old cavalry buddies. 

“I give my heart too easily,” he’d told the little orphan girl as he’d lifted her onto the transport, hoping her life improved from here on out. She didn’t speak or understand English, and he was glad, because he needed to say it… and hadn’t been able to, not even to Mulcahy. 

He shivered as he remembered that huge hand clasping his shoulder for a moment, the tidewater flavor of that voice saying, “Max.” 

_ I give my heart too easily _ . 

First his childhood sweetheart and over-the-phone wife… now this. 

And there wasn’t going to be any fancy “tontine.” 

Charles probably wouldn’t even tell him goodbye - and he sure as hell wouldn’t look him up after the war, or raise a glass in his memory, or say that he’d ever loved him, even as a friend. 

Klinger wished, then, that Potter had just invited the officers. He was just a lowly Corporal. Good enough to get the mail, to try to get movies or catalogues or treats (people were always happy to see him when he  _ had stuff  _ ) … but the rest of the time he was someone to yell at, to express disappointment in, to put on report or threaten with KP… to belittle, to laugh at. 

For the first time in a long time, Klinger’s schemer’s brain blinked awake.

No one cared about him here. 

Maybe the Colonel, but he was the clerk. So, maybe the Colonel had to care? He’d been in charge of delivering the invitations to the Colonel’s strange ceremony; inviting him was probably just politeness. The rest of them didn’t even bother with that. 

_ Isn’t like I’m a cute farm kid, like Radar _ . 

Max frowned, remembering Hawk rushing around looking for Radar’s escaped guinea pig.  **_Him_ ** _ they’d help. Me? Only if it was something they  _ **_had_ ** _ to treat… and then they’d blame me for being dumb enough to catch it.  _

No one had even noticed that he’d left off his costumes, lately, for hastily donned fatigues… or, worse, if they had, they commended him for “finally growing up.” 

_ They don’t know me at all… don’t get that it isn’t that I don’t  _ **_want_ ** _ to still dress pretty (at least sometimes) it’s that there’s no time! I can’t answer the damn phone at 3 AM, do sentry duty, peel potatoes, hunt down makeup for the nurses, file reports, deliver the mail, help in OR  _ **_and sew_ ** _. Hell, half the time I fall asleep in the showers _ ! 

Why was he expected to be so grown up anyway, he wondered then. Radar had slept with a teddy bear! Henry Blake had tucked him in, more often than not! And here he was, Maxwell Q. Klinger, with his birthday seven months after Radar’s (which nobody  _ ever _ celebrated, thank you very much) and he constantly got told to chin up, to man up, to fly right, to be an adult - and this from Hawkeye Pierce, who appeared, not infrequently, in Groucho glasses or a gorilla suit! 

It was clear enough. Radar was their little boy. Their great innocent. He was… what? Not worth the time, mostly. An unwanted replacement. Even during his divorce, he’d had to  _ reenlist _ to get the attention of his so-called friends.  _ You don’t even get what I’m losing! _ he’d wanted to yell at them.  _ Radar isn’t the only innocent one!  _ And Radar had less reason to be scared: people had looked out for him, they hadn’t used him in OR, and he didn’t wear a dress.  _ Less reason to be lonely, too _ . When Blake had gone, the Swamp had become slumber party central, with Radar welcome there until he got past the stress produced by a change in command. Klinger tried to imagine Winchester allowing him to curl up at his side the way he longed to do and just came up with the memory of the man describing Beacon Hill, “where, at one time, you would not have been allowed to walk.” 

And not one of these healers, as he tried his damnedest to help them because he really believed in their work, as he fed them and cleaned them up and drove them around and led them back to bed and got them the things they needed and bragged on them to their frightened, waiting, wounded patients, ever bothered to ask  _ how  _ he was - unless it was to take the time to tell him to get a better attitude.  _ You try _ , he thought, remembering the most recent day during which he’d been called out for being a bratty kid,  _ when you gave blood twice in two days, didn’t have time ta eat nothing, and had a headache coming on that’d make you look sideways at your rifle…  _

Hawk hadn’t asked about his headaches in months, either.  _ Best care anywhere, huh? As long as you’re an all-American cutie pie, I guess… If you’re poor and not real bright and have dark skin and… _ He trailed off. 

Even he didn’t know how to think about himself when it came to gender. He knew there were doctors who could transform the make of the body in which he went through the world… and he knew that he didn’t want to go under any knives. But he wasn’t a guy like the Colonel or Hawkeye or the soldiers whose bodies he tended… not all the way. And sometimes it hurt and sometimes it scared him. He’d gotten away with the dresses here as a dodge… but in the civilian world? Who was ever going to want or to accept Maxwell Q. Klinger? Maybe a carnival freak show. 

He liked soft fabrics and sparkly eye shadow. He liked shaping curls into his hair with his fingers (would have  _ loved _ for someone else to do it). He wore lace next to the most secret parts of himself and longed to move softly under someone who would be gentle with him for hours. But he wasn’t a gal like the nurses who raided his clothes for his date nights and he’d been hurt - a lot - for daring to embody this part of himself, for dressing in silk and satin… and he knew his family expected him to leave this part of himself in Korea. 

Tears spilled from his eyes. He didn’t fight them.  _ Comrades. Buddies. Best friend. Dear friends.  _ He had tried to give Charles another title once and had it thrown back in his teeth - with a fun little bit of wordplay thrown in. Verbal sparring was, perhaps, the defining feature of their relationship… if it wasn’t Charles’ contempt. Klinger made a pained sound. He had  _ that _ anyway. Winchester liked to argue with him, to try to put him down just to have Klinger pop up swinging, makeup  _ flawless _ , seams straight. It was less than a friendship -  _ worse  _ \- than a friendship, but he couldn’t turn his back on it. Couldn’t turn away. 

He didn’t turn when the tent door swung open, but his shoulders tensed. Someone wanting something, he predicted. Never mind that he wasn’t in the office. Never mind that nobody in the whole damn 4077th (Father Mulcahy excepted when it  _ didn’t  _ involve the orphanage) could tell the difference between a want and a need. He tried to fix his face, used the cover to mop up tears that nobody wanted bothered with, that nobody would have the patience for. 

He tried to strip the exhaustion from his voice, too. Margaret would label it “insubordination;” Potter would tell him to stop sulking (the Colonel had just lost a friend, so Klinger guessed he had a right). Captain Hunnicutt would make it about him and how he was so much worse off because he was away from his wife and little girl. Klinger could never quite figure this out. Wasn’t the Captain actually  _ luckier _ than the rest of them? He had someone waiting who had said forever. Captain Pierce would joke him out of it if he was in a good mood, say something snide about the size of his nose or his incompetence as a clerk if he wasn’t. 

Every time the latter happened, Klinger bit his tongue. He hadn’t asked to be the clerk! He was  _ trying _ ! English wasn’t his first language, for crying out loud - never mind  _ Army  _ English, which was (unbeknownst to Max) the offspring of the terminology used in law books. That the letters sometimes shifted or jumbled on him… he hadn’t confided that to anyone, didn’t want to hear any new cracks about how stupid he was. He had wanted to go to college - not that he ever could have afforded it - and he  _ liked _ to learn new things (in those rare moments when someone actually considered him bright enough to teach him). At home, he’d gone to all kinds of free lectures at the library (when work didn’t get in the way). And wasn’t it kind of ungentlemanly of these educated officers not to realize that not having the cash or the opportunity (he’d been drafted two months before his nineteenth birthday) for seminary or medical school or “Haavaadh,” wasn’t the same thing, exactly, as being  _ stupid _ ? 

Turning over onto his side, he looked up into eyes that shared a color, far as he could tell, with nothing on Earth. He’d searched fabric swatches, gemstones, flower petals, and paint palettes, but Winchester blue was its own thing. 

“Maxwell?” The man’s long lashes were wet. “Are you alright?” 

“Right as rain, Major. What do you need?”

He sat the bottle and glasses on the repurposed packing crate that served as Klinger’s nightstand, still unnerved by his glittering eyes. How could this young man sound so even and unaffected when he clearly was not? And why not? Potter? Klinger was a loyal little thing. But Potter was well. 

“The Colonel wished me to have the last of this brandy, merely because I have never built a still and so can appreciate it, I think, but he wishes the actual glass to go to you. It is lovely and he knows how you like to repurpose bottles as vases. Finish it with me?” 

Klinger agreed and longed to place his lips on the edge of the glass where Charles’ had rested. It would have been less than a kiss… but, for him, it would have been enough. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter references the episode "Morale Victory."

“Underestimating Klinger has become a national pastime,” BJ had said - and it had made the Corporal smile, but he was still glad when the party wound down and he could make his way back to his tent. 

The camp had its seafood dinner (complete with summer wheat beer - and what a dark horse trade that had been), the nurses had their cosmetics, the Captains had a victory (for which they would be credited though they had done very little), the Major had his music…

_ And what do I got?  _

Exhaustion, mostly. Homesickness that was less about Toledo than it was about a place where he’d be  _ wanted _ . The pass to Seoul wouldn’t help with that. 

“I heard you acquired a foot locker full of crabs in Seoul, Corporal,” a jaunty, too-pleased-with-itself, accented as if  _ programmed  _ to get him hot voice said to his back. “These things tend to occur when one associates with individuals of a lower caliber.” 

Klinger’s shoulders dropped so dramatically that Winchester looked for a knife in his back; the pianist he’d just been treating had less obvious nerve issues. “Like me?”

“Max? I’m sorry?” 

Klinger turned. “You heard me. Don’t fall all over yourself trying to tell me otherwise, sir.” 

Winchester let him walk away; the physician had just been eviscerated after what he’d mistakenly reveled in as a surgical triumph and was still humbled, still smarting. Now  _ Klinger  _ was giving him grief? Calling him “sir” (which was Klinger for “I have to be civil to you but I am seriously unimpressed,”)?!? 

But after a moment, he followed, swept into the Corporal’s tent to find him curled up in his cot looking terribly small. 

“Maxwell? Are you ill?” 

He barked a laugh. “If I say yes, will it get me off the hook?”

That laugh… it didn’t sound like Max at all. “This is the second time in recent memory that I have seen you with tears in your lovely eyes.” 

“Nice of you to notice, I guess?” 

There was nothing nice about it. “Surely you are not  _ crying _ , man, because of a few joking words!?”

It made Klinger so furious that his dark eyes flashed. 

Charles didn’t care about him. 

Charles cared that it wasn’t  _ his fault _ ; he didn’t want any dents in the old Winchester crest. Certainly, Klinger thought, not any caused by something so unworthy of notice as a Lebanese transvestite. “No, Major. You know the score around here. You can pretty much say anything you want to me without any consequences, so go enjoy the party, huh? I’m not some patient you get paid to care about.”

Charles sensed that he was treading on ice… and he was a large, tall man; all this creaking and groaning wasn’t heartening. “Maxwell, perhaps I am mistaken, but I was under the impression that you and I were friends.” 

“Sure thing, sir.” As long as he was useful. As long as he retrieved things and proved amusing. As long as he drove and cared for the surgeon and never asked for anything at all - never taxed their “bond” with any kind of need. It hurt because he wanted to be Charles’ friend - he really did. But he knew better than to ask for more than whatever he had of the man. 

“Maxwell, I have a younger sister, did you know that? Her voice sounds precisely that way when I have made a mistake that is so egregious that she simply  _ cannot _ be moved to take the time to explain it to my oblivious self. She usually follows my questions with ‘I am fine, Charles,’ and forces me to figure out my terrible misstep on my own. So, tell me this, my dear, how are you tonight?”

The sounds of the party drifted in. Laughter. (Probably, thought Klinger, the laughter of people who actually  _ liked _ being around one another.) Cans being cracked open. A shower of sparks as a log burst in a fire pit. “I  _ am _ fine. And, lucky you, I’m not important like Nori, so you don’t have to lose any sleep over me. You’d better go eat if you’re gonna.”

Charles’ eyes had narrowed. “Nori?”

“ ‘s what I call her in my head.” He knew he should apologize; he’d probably insulted the family honor or something, even though he’d never seen the girl and had only heard a few, musical notes of her voice when connecting Charles’ calls. 

“She would like that.” He stood then and Max thought it was done, their odd tete-a-tete, but Charles just retrieved a blanket from atop his footlocker and proceeded to tuck it around him. “I hate seeing you frightened,” he said, when this was done, “but this is worse.” 

“So, don’t see it. Told you you could go.”

“You told me you were ‘fine,’ as well.” He made himself really look at the younger man. Max wasn’t a patient, true, but he could still use the eyes of a physician to check on him. The white strings of his apron were bright against the back of the Corporal’s neck. Charles knew that he’d decorated it himself with a silly hand-written message; it always made him smile, like the flowers Klinger often tucked behind one ear or wore in a sort of diagonal spray across his dark hair. He wore a faded jersey under the apron, the silky material gone cream from overwear and over-washing. 

Fashion mattered to Klinger. The jersey was for comfort, that was simple enough. The apron to amuse others.  _ Like a court jester _ , Charles mused. But this thought was followed, uncomfortably, with the name the Bard had given such figures.  _ Like  _ **_a fool_ ** _.  _ And didn’t they make him into one? A figure to amuse them? To berate? “ _ They'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”  _ It made him think of just how Max had answered him:  _ If I say yes, will it get me off the hook?  _ Was this Klinger for, “will it keep you from being mean to me?” 

Perhaps clothing could be an in. The younger man wasn’t his usual couture self, but Charles could find something, he was sure, even if it was something unfinished lying around the room. A sad bolt of silk caught his eyes; it was an opalescent color between blue and white, as the base of a wave being whipped into a fine lace of foam. “What did this poor piece do to get cast aside into so sad a heap?” he asked, trying to gentle his voice as he’d heard Potter do with his mare when she shied. 

Klinger shrugged with a shoulder that seemed too thin. “No time,” he admitted. 

Charles wound up the strip of cloth to feel it catch on his finger pads; he’d seen Max use such pieces to tie hats beneath his chin… though he couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen him in feminine garb. As the ribbon was coiled, a square of paper came into view. 

“That is quite the drug cocktail.” It included anti-nausea medication and ginger, benadryl, triptans, otcs and vitamins. 

Klinger quietly wished himself into invisibility. Whatever other accusations might be leveled at Charles, the man was a damn good physician. There was no way he wouldn’t know what he was reading. 

“Maxwell?”

“Yeah, Major?” 

“I have seen you scheme - exquisitely at times - but I have never seen you lie. I believe you are about to make the attempt. I will not censor you or even ‘call you on it,’ as you would say, but I should like to know why.” 

Klinger sank down onto his elbows, a coltish gesture that reinforced Charles’ earlier belief that the young man was too thin. “ ‘cause the truth won’t matter.” 

Winchester flicked his eyes back over the precise dosages. “This is Pierce’s writing. He is treating you?” 

“Used to. I can handle it myself now.” 

Those dosages did not bear him out. “And these headaches - do they worsen when it rains? When it becomes cold?”

Klinger shrugged. “ ‘s not important. My work gets done either way, right?”  _ You got your music. Now take those eyes that hurt me with the way they’re so pretty but so far away and so fucking cold and leave me alone. _

Accepting that the cold shoulder was all he was going to receive, Charles stood. “I do hope you feel better soon, Corporal. The camp is quite drab without your skirts and flounces.” 


	3. Chapter 3

He was feeling good enough to look up from his plate, good enough to look around. What he saw was Maxwell Klinger looking forlorn. 

There’d been whistles when he’d come in. “Yeah, yeah,” he’d said. 

Charles replayed this. He had told the young man he hoped to see him back in high style. Now he was, but the energy he usually displayed was missing. 

Was Max  _ shy _ ? 

Something. 

Lonely? 

Whatever he was, the look on his young face wasn’t a joke. Nobody could be that sad over a joke. 

He was glad the young man was back in the items that comforted him… but did that just mean that Max needed  _ more _ comfort than usual? Something had been going on with the man since their scare with Potter, but Max could be, Charles was learning, like a locked box when he wanted to. He did his work efficiently and with as little conversation as possible - Margaret actually thought it an improvement - but Charles knew better. And he didn’t like being shut out. 

When he looked again, the Corporal and his skirts were missing. 

He wanted to approach the pretty, slender Corporal in his black skirt again. What was that saying? Third time pays for all? But Klinger hadn’t been happy to see him lately and the last thing he wanted to do was add to the young man’s distress. He needed advice and, with Honoria an ocean and a continent away, the only person he respected enough to ask was the man who had summoned them for a toast. 

Potter welcomed him in easily enough and Charles did his damnedest not to show how nervous he was. What he was doing… it was miles out of character- and he couldn’t help but fear that he’d do it very wrong. 

He began there, with the truth. “There are, Colonel… there are things at which I am not skilled.”

Potter nodded him on. 

“I admire you, sir. You made that promise as a young man and kept it alike to the living and the dead. I have never had anyone to promise anything to… but I have acquired a friend, here. Or I thought that I had. And I seem to be, ah, losing him.” 

One didn’t become a bird Colonel without keen eyesight. “You’ve noticed it, too, huh? Knew it had to be something off the beaten track when a three-day pass didn’t brighten ‘im up. And his skirts are back - the tricky, lacy stuff. You saying you have an inkling as to why, Winchester?” 

Charles indulged in the boyish gesture of hitching one shoulder. “Perhaps? I thought it was his concern for you, a holdover from our fear about…”

“About my toes turning up? Sounds sensible. Max is like a son to me. A daughter, too, I suppose. But he knows everything is alright.” 

Winchester told him about the drug cocktail, the too bright eyes. 

“Hmm. Might be I can add my two bits, too. It’s been awhile since anybody messed with our kid Corporal, but it can’t be easy being a boy in a dress. With Radar gone, he’s the nco who has to put up with the carping, yelling, fussing lot of us - we ain’t always gentle with as we might should be. He takes cracks for his heritage and his upbringing on top of the dresses.”

Charles looked ashamed at that. “I have made several of them.” 

“It’s not too late for an apology if you’ve gone and learned better - not too late for any of us, I’d wager. But there’s one more thing. Heard the boy on the phone with his family. They can’t wait to have him back home, but they want ‘im back in pants.” 

_ Poor Maxwell _ . His wife had left him for another man - probably, in his mind, a  _ real  _ man… now his family was asking him to disavow part of himself. Charles had seen the sketches; Max might have a future in fashion if he wasn’t forced to close the door on it. 

“I do not know the answer to that,” Charles admitted. “But might we not lighten the man’s workload a bit? He’s not a bad clerk, but he does struggle with it.”

“You offering to step into harness once in awhile?”

He surprised even himself. “If it helps him to look less miserable, yes.”

To his even greater surprise, Potter shook his hand. 


	4. Chapter 4

No one could have foreseen that clerking for Maxwell would lead where it did. But when Potter told the Corporal it had been Winchester’s idea, that he was there out of friendship and his own freewill, Klinger hadn’t been able to get his mouth to close. 

That evening - an actual  _ free _ evening - he’d set out to sew - but he had mostly just  _ stared _ . 

Charles helping him?

What could that possibly mean? 

He tried to work and luxuriated in just being warm and not being yelled at, but he kept thinking of the Major taking his place. He pictured those pale, perfect hands and frowned at the notion of the whorls there stained by carbon paper or the ink pad for various army stamps. Did the Major even know how to use a typewriter or a stapler? 

And one word pounded with the blood in his temples:  _ why _ ? 

It was his shift, so Max knew precisely when Charles would be finished. He was standing behind him when he did. 

“Maxwell?” Those pale brows came together. “Is something the matter? I had hoped you would be resting.”

Whatever words he had planned to say evaporated from his tongue; since when did Charles Emerson Winchester III hope  _ anything  _ where a lowly company clerk was concerned? 

“I… I…” 

One of those enormous hands smoothed his hair back, feeling around at the edge of his cheek, his temple. “Another headache? You look quite ill. Shall I get Pierce?” 

_ This can’t be real _ . Charles’ touch - no matter how casual, hell, the brush of his hand passing the salt - was always too much for him because he always  _ wanted  _ it. His fingers came up and grasped the fingers resting on his skin and tears rose in his eyes because it wasn’t enough that he was going to lose this for good… he knew just  _ what _ it was that he was losing. He had never been wounded in combat, but Maxwell thought, in that moment, that he could have dared gunfire to keep some remnant of this warmth. 

Dumbfounded by this transformation - by the liquid constellations sparkling on long lashes that forced him to remember that all starlight that he had ever seen came from stars that had died, was but a memory of beauty - Winchester took this terrible tribute onto his fingertips. The notes of  _ Abenstern _ rose in his mind:  _ … for you are so gentle… why art thou so shunned?  _ “Why does this keep happening to us?” 

Maxwell made a choked sound as a pained wheeze of laughter tried to claw its way out of the tightened corridors of his throat. “ _ Us _ ?” He dashed the tears away with a rough touch. “Don’t lower yourself like that, sir.” He gestured at the office, a poor stage for a man as magnificent and cultured and accomplished as the Major. “Not sure why you did with all this, ta be honest.”

Confusion ruled Charles’ broad brow. “I…” He rocked back and put his hands in his pockets, a warding gesture Klinger had seen when Pierce really went for him. “I seem to be mistaken,” he said softly. “I… you…” He remembered, then, all that the Colonel had told him. He wanted to retreat, but he had amends to make first. He had used his name and breeding and family honor as shields to see him through worse things. He reminded himself that he was a Winchester and persevered. “Is there somewhere we might speak? This place, I have discovered tonight, gets an inordinate amount of traffic. I scarce know how you accomplish anything in the midst of such distractions.” 

“My tent, I guess. I can make tea.” The last was grudging - said because being anything  _ less  _ than polite did not come easily to Farrida Klinger’s son  _ and  _ because Charles had just gotten to him with that bit about his job. 

“Excellent. After you?” And as he gestured, opening the door for him like a class dame, he  _ also _ pushed a monogrammed handkerchief into his hand (Klinger knew its value to the penny; smoke-blue thread was a custom dye and  _ pricey _ ) and he dabbed at his eyes just to inhale the cedar-lemon sugar- sea salt smell that was signature Charles. 

Kicking the mess aside - he hadn’t been counting on company - Max freed a chair for his guest and made tea, sharing out his meager comforts as Charles steeled himself to say those words that never came easily to a Winchester:  _ I was wrong _ . 

“I did not realize all the burdens you bear here,” he began. “I knew you were frightened, of course. Do you have any idea how badly I hate to see you scared?” 

Klinger shook his head. 

“My mistake. I… I was cruel to you when I arrived here, Max. I could offer the excuse that I followed the lead of my fellow officers, but we both know that Winchesters are not followers. My sins were my own. But as time passed, I learned better. I thought we became friends. Certainly, no one else here wishes a close association with me. But I never apologized for my earlier behavior, so how were you to know that I was joking now? It is very late, now, but would you accept my apologies, Max?” 

“You didn’t mean it?” His eyes were skeptical. “When you called me stupid? Or, or,” his mouth crumpled a little, “... ugly?” 

Charles abandoned his tea and his seat and gathered the Corporal to him in all his slippery skirts. “No,” he said into his dark hair. “I thought it all part of the word games that we played. And I am deeply sorry that I hurt you.” 

“ ‘s alright, sir. Nothing nobody else hasn’t said lots of times before.”

“That does not make it true or right.” He drew back a bit. “And my remorse has not won me free of your anger if you are still referring to me as ‘sir.’”

“Huh?”

“You only call me ‘sir’ when you are upset with me… or, perhaps, overwrought in general. Please, Maxwell. I wish to be your friend. To help you face your problems.”

“So, before, when you talked about your sister…”

“I wish to care for you as I have always cared for her, yes.” He decided to dare something. “The Colonel suggested that you had curtailed your search for a section eight recently, that you have, in fact, some concerns about returning home.”

Klinger hung his head. There was no way he could endure this in front of Charles. Why had the Colonel given him away? He was a doctor! Didn’t he know that it throbbed like an open wound to be some  _ thing _ that absolutely _ no one _ wanted him to be!? To be  _ between _ ? Didn’t he remember how sick Max had been when he’d ordered him out of skirts? Didn’t he  _ care _ ? He forced a sarcastic smile. “Yeah, I do. But there’s always Coney Island, right? A freak show can’t pay less than army clerking, right? Probably less work, too.” 

The word rose in his mind like a low howl from a dark ravine, some fissure whose bottom could not be guessed at:  _ no.  _ Grabbing a slender arm, he sat the Corporal down on his cot and sat with him. The motions were not precisely gentle, but his Hippocratic oath was in the forefront of his mind. “Maxwell… why have you not mentioned this before?”

“I  _ mention _ it all the time. I’ve talked to a psychiatrist, sir. I know all the words. Deviant. Transvestite. You think my family wants one of those around? I got a ton of girl cousins. Who's gonna trust me around them if I say what I really am?” 

As the brother to a lovely girl whose family had sought to keep him from because of his own perceived waywardness, Charles felt his heart break for the younger man. “Maxwell, please listen to me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you.”

He managed that broken laugh again, the one that made Charles think of a rusty trap and an animal in pain; he was amazed at the Corporal’s bravado. “That’s real nice of you to say, sir, - Major,” he corrected. “But they don’t want me back like this.” He gestured to his skirts, the cool spill of boysenberry cloth. “An’ I don’t know how to be what they want without bein’ sick all the time. I’m not strong enough.” 

“You are the strongest person I know,” Charles told him, seeing in his mind, Klinger in those early days of his arrival at the 4077th - Klinger in heels and pearls, his thin wrists straining as he bore a litter. “Being asked to kill a part of yourself… it is not strength that you lack, my dear. I know. I have been given the same order. You simply are not a murderer. Furthermore, Max, there have been individuals like you throughout history, those who did not cleave to a single gender, that existed in between, combined elements of both, or chose neither. I am speaking as a doctor when I tell you that there is  _ nothing  _ wrong with you. Indeed, I have long admired you for living your truth in the eye of this lie of a ‘police action,’ - as I admire your beauty while doing it.” 

Max felt dizzy. 

“So, if you feel that it may take time to face Toledo, please let me venture an alternative to Coney Island. Margaret will certify you as a nurse if I press her. What do you say to helping me establish a practice? We can stay near your family until they come around.” 

“You? In Ohio!?” 

“Why not? You are a fine nurse - fine receptionist, too.”

“You’re gonna need a bodyguard, not a nurse! You can’t handle Toledo! There’s no... whaddaya call it? Culture and stuff. No pheasants or caviars.”

Charles laughed. “Alright. Boston, then. And what if I set up an office in Boston? Would you want to be my nurse there?”

“Guys in dresses get arrested back at home,” Maxwell reminded him. 

Charles slipped an arm around his waist to shore him up. “Not when there is a Winchester in the picture. What is all that money good for if not buying ignorance?"

“It’s  _ your _ money, though. Why throw it away on me? Besides, thought you were in a hurry for a society wedding and some kids you could ship off to boarding school.” 

Charles did something then that Max never forgot. He stood and knelt before him, hands on his skirt-covered knees. "Well, perhaps I have come to accept some.... rather interesting facts about myself... that I would rather be a confirmed bachelor than in a loveless, miserable marriage." He held his eyes.  _ Do you understand? _

“That was it, wasn’t it? Your tontine? You just... you’d hafta trust me  _ a lot  _ to say something like that.” 

Charles didn’t speak. He just drew the younger man’s hand to his mouth and kissed his wrist. “Come home with me, Maxwell.” The words were said against his skin, punctuated by a kiss between his thumb and forefinger, another at the heel of his hand. “I shall treasure you in whatever clothing you choose. You may be whatever you wish. My girl. My man. And I will adore you.”

“When did this… how did this happen!?” 

“Mmm,” his tongue busied itself a moment, coaxing a finger into his mouth. “I am placing the blame squarely with you, beautiful. You bewitched me with satin and ribbons - and you are so very, very  _ kind _ . I was helpless to do other than lose my unworthy heart to you.” He looked up, hopeful. “Since you have not asked me to  _ stop  _ kissing you, may I presume that my affection is not wholly undesirable?” 

Max leaned down and spoke into his ear. 

Winchester’s shoulders went up in a pleased little dance, but he still looked disbelieving. “From  _ kissing _ ?” 

“Maybe the uh, the gal stuff, too. You want proof?” He guided his fingers to tangle in damp lace. 

“Oh, darling… let’s get you out of these. You deserve so much more than this.”

“Won’t take much.”

“I shall be flattered. And darling? Since you are quite freed from your clerking duties? I shall be  _ staying _ .” 

Klinger read the determination in his eyes. “Staying? All night?”

“Yes. Need I elaborate on what I intend  _ you  _ to be doing?” 

“You can go ahead and show me if you want.”

He did - and it was exquisite. 

And though Charles’ touch did not banish all of Maxwell’s problems at once (the war went on), after that night, Maxwell never had to face them alone again. 

Holding him in the early hours of the morning, Charles spoke a series of private promises meant to bind them for good and always. 

“When you feel I have earned the right, I should like to say these things in front of our friends as well.” 

Max smiled. He would like that. He thought maybe the Colonel would give him away. He needed to apologize to him for his earlier, ungenerous thoughts. Potter had clearly had a better read on Charles than he had. “Just say ‘I love you,’ to me a bunch, huh? ‘Til I believe it.” 

“Of course. I  _ do _ love you, Maxwell. And I regret that you ever hurt a moment for loving  _ me _ .” 

“Only because you meant so much… ‘cause I wanted to mean something to you.” 

“Everything. You are everything to me. I am sorry I was not a better friend.” 

“I always wanted to marry my best friend. You think you can make that happen, Major?” 

“Oh, yes, darling. I promise.” 

Klinger snuggled down against him. “This feels like the end of a fairy tale, you know that? Happily ever after? Warm and safe?” 

“Good.” Charles stroked his hair. “But, love?”

“Hmm?”

“This is just the beginning.”

The end! 


End file.
